DX Audio Service
Historical Moments
March 1997
That Fateful Night, November 2, 1920
Historical Moments in Radio .. a collection of stories of the rich and
exciting past on the a.m. radio dial .. and today a look at the origins
of radio broadcasting back over 75 years ago .. to 1920. Back in 1971,
Gleason Archer authored a book entitled The History of Radio to 1926
published by the Arno Press and the New York Times. Much of what he
wrote stands alone these days as a documenting of early broadcasting.
And today I want to quote from his description of the events just prior
to and during that famous "First Broadcast" of the election returns by
the Westinghouse Company in Pittsburgh on November Second, 1920.
By way of background, the great world war had ended in 1918 but during
the war, the Westinghouse Company had designed and manufactured several
radio transmitters capable of carrying the human voice. Among those in
the company responsible for this feat was Frank Conrad and his sidekicks
L.W. Chubb and O.S. Schairer. The future looked quite bright for this
group in the Westinghouse environment, until the agreement was reached
between General Electric, Western Electric and Westinghouse to pool all
their patents and take charge of radio development in the U.S. under an
umbrella company to be called the Radio Corporation of America. That
happened in 1919 and, in effect, ended the British controlled Marconi
Company's hold on radio developments here.
Dr. Frank Conrad had continued his experiments with radio telephone
transmissions from his home during this period and had frequently put on
programs of recorded music as he was testing his circuits. He had an
experimental radio license from the Department of Commerce; his call sign
was 8XK, and he was amazed when a local record store offered to let him
borrow their new records because they had learned that many people in
their neighborhood were tuning in to hear Dr. Conrad's amateur programs.
The real trigger that started the radio broadcasting industry was an ad
that appeared in the Pittsburgh Sun newspaper on the evening of September
29, 1920. Mr. H.P. Davis, Vice President of Westinghouse saw that ad and
early the next day, called Conrad and his associates to his office to
discuss what was going on. That ad, you see, simply said that one of the
department stores in town had a stock of radio receivers that could be
used to receive the programs sent out by Dr. Conrad. Mr. Davis
immediately saw the commercial possibilities. Westinghouse would put up
a transmitter that might cover the whole city .. and they would
manufacture radios that could pick up those programs and a whole radio
receiver industry would be born!
Davis asked Conrad and his associates if they thought they could assemble
a station and antenna system on the tallest building in the Westinghouse
complex in East Pittsburgh, and if they could do it by the first of
November! Remember now, this meeting was held on September 30, 1920 so
they only had 31 days to accomplish this. Conrad said "Yes".
Bedlam ensued. First a protected location for the transmitter had to be
found close enough to the open roof area of that building so the antenna
could be wired directly to the transmitter. They solved that problem by
erecting a special structure on the roof of the building.
(more of this paragraph)
That structure was later destroyed by high winds and replaced with a tent
.. but they also needed space for the announcers next to the transmitter
and then they needed someway of getting the latest news up to that
announcing position.
Someone thought quickly enough to apply for a radio license and, on
October 27th, 1920, the Department of Commerce issued a license with the
historic call letters KDKA. Over the years a question has arisen about
that license; there are those who claim that Westinghouse never received
the license before the famous election returns broadcast and that they
continued to use an older experimental license granted to Westinghouse
for some tests under the call sign 8ZZ. The recording you may have heard
of that historic first broadcast was a recreation made nearly 10 years
after the actual event so we can't offer that as proof either way.
Slowly but surely the fledgling station took shape and the first tests
were conducted on Monday, November 1, 1920. They were dreadful. The
antenna wouldn't tune right, everyone was getting electric shocks when
they touched any of the equipment and the radio signal faded in less than
two miles. Conrad and his associates worked well into the night trying
to fix first this, and then that .. tests on the morning of November 2,
1920 were much better and, during the day, even more refinements were
made. That evening was the scheduled broadcast .. and who do you think
was at the controls?
Well it wasn't Frank Conrad. No. Dr. Conrad was so nervous that
something technical would go wrong he stayed at home .. but AT his home
he had a duplicate transmitter ready to go if anything went wrong over at
the Westinghouse plant.
Nothing did go wrong. The broadcast was a roaring success. Within a
week Westinghouse had started serious plans for other stations in New
Jersey and Massachusetts. And the rest is history. For Historical
Moments in Radio, this is John Bowker.